Users of prescription medicines often have to take multiple medicines each day. In some cases, different doses of different medicines have to be taken at specified times of day. Patients, who suffer from other conditions requiring multiple medications, typically spend time each day selecting the pills to be taken that day, and placing the selected pills in a container with multiple compartments. This helps them remember when to consume the pills from the various compartments during the day.
Further difficulties that many patients face are that their ailments may often cause fatigue or depression and thus reduce their ability to accurately select the proper medicines for their daily medication regimen. Selecting and sorting multiple medications can also be a significant inconvenience for patients who experience painful movement such as those that suffer from arthritis of the digits, wrist, elbow or shoulder.
Health care providers such as nurses or other practitioners who do not prescribe, but who are responsible for administering medicine, are also challenged to accurately sort and select daily medicine for their patients. This is especially true in a hospital setting where nurses are often under significant stress. Such health care providers could benefit when multiple medicines for their patients are packaged with the proper doses for each time slot on their patients' schedule already selected and separated.
Furthermore, it is conventional for a doctor to prescribe one or more medications for a patient to take one or more times during the day, and perhaps at certain times of the day. The medications are usually in the form of pills, but may also be powders and liquids.
Particularly for the elderly, often more than one medication must be taken on a daily basis. Conventionally, various devices have been provided to make it easier for patients, in particular, elderly patients, to organize their daily medication. One of these devices is in the form of a container having different compartments, one compartment representing a different medication time. Such a conventional device does not necessarily provide any indication on when the tablets contained in a particular compartment must be taken. If the compartments are demarcated by a day designation and multiple tablets must be taken at different times during the day, the presence of several of the same tablet in the compartment does not give the elderly patient any information other than that all of those tablets must be taken during that particular day.
Another conventional solution is to provide a medicine scheduler which can be filled out by a doctor and provided to a patient with a graphic indication of the appearance of each tablet or medicine which must be taken, and specific instructions concerning each medication. This conventional solution still requires the patient to spend time each day selecting the pills that are associated with the scheduler, requiring the patient to have functional eyesight and the ability to discern between medications, to be taken that day.
A further conventional solution provides for the preparing of a document based on prescription information from a doctor and other information about the medicine and a medicine bag with such information printed thereon. As with the other conventional solutions, this conventional solution still requires the patient to manage multiple bags to ensure that the proper medication is taken and at the correct time.
Therefore, it is desirable to provide a method or system whereby the burden of selecting and sorting medications is shifted from the patients and other health care providers. Such a system would deliver medicine to those who administer or self-administer it packaged with the proper doses for each time slot on the schedule already selected and separated.